With summer produce pretty well put up by now, the beautiful fall produce is coming in like gangbusters. Two of my favorites are turnip and okra. With plentiful supply and a fridge with a complete lack of kimchi, I thought first of turnip kimchi, which is relatively common. When I grabbed the okra and thought of kimchi, the record skipped off of the turntable. No mention of it in books or on the internet. Okra, however, is plentiful in our house, so if the kimchi bombs, at worst, we will roast it and end up with a salty, spicy vegetable dish.

Okra is an all time favorite of mine and they run deep in my Oklahoma family. Most people dislike the slimy nature of okra and when roasted at high temperature or pickled, the sliminess is kept to a minimum. I love them prepped without slime, but I also like them as a soup thickener and especially in gumbo with maximum slime. This kimchi has little to no acidity (minus actual fermentation), so the slime would be there, but would it get in the way?

Turnips are the underdog of root vegetables. I love the radish-like peppery flavor of turnips that, to me, places the turnip atop the root vegetable totem pole. The texture is a little softer and creamier than the radish and not as starchy as a potato. David Chang outlines turnip kimchi in the Momofuku by modifying the napa cabbage kimchi. I followed that formula here with a slight modification of halving the sugar. I really liked the Momofuku kimchi, but found it to be a little sweet for my tastes. I used a cucumber kimchi recipe (also from Chang) and adapted it for the okra also modifying it with lower sugar in a similar way.

The turnip kimchi turned out pretty textbook. The overnight salting leeched about 2 cups of water from the sliced turnips, which was unexpected, and the kimchi liquid to turnip ratio was dead on. As it aged, the kimchi’s fermentation worked like a charm and the peppery notes were strong. The okra kimchi looked a little dry at first (see photo above), so I worried, but I trust the ratios, so I let it be. A week later, the texture was just right, but with a twist. The slime was right there and it was spectacular.  As I stirred the kimchi, long strands of slime connected pod to pod and was bright red with kochukaru. The pods were still crisp with seeds crunching on every bite. The slime made the kimchi liquid into a viscous sauce.

Now, I knew what I was getting with the turnip kimchi. It would be good and it was traditional. I love turnip and I love kimchi, so this was going to win. On the flip side, I have never heard of anyone making okra into kimchi and given the unstable sliminess, this was a far bigger risk. Sometimes a big risk results in a huge bomb, like the attempt at smoked cauliflower for a Labor Day BBQ, but sometimes, like with the okra kimchi, you find something new and great. Something that you will make over and over again.